Of Nuclear Wars, Founding Charters, Guns and ‘What Ifs’

Author’s note: I am a nobody. I never amounted to a bean, let alone a hill of them. About a decade ago as I began to age perceptibly, I discovered the Internet. Not “discover” in the sense that Albert the Magnificent discovered it, but I noticed it was there and had utility for my purpose, which at the time was to reactivate long-dormant brain cells. After a while, I discovered that not only could you find out darned near anything on the World Wide Web, you could reach out and engage nearly anybody. One of the people I engaged was professor Jeremy Rabkin, of George Mason University, a noted scholar. He was kind enough to endure the engagement and I chatted with him off-and-on for a year or so about subjects that I was interested but not sufficiently schooled in, such as national sovereignty for example. I bought his book and he explained some things and then I found other avenues and he started work on a new book and I didn’t want to bother him, so the engagement lapsed. I will be forever grateful for his civility.

“Perhaps we should admire that level of devotion to the Constitution. But we have a stronger preference for avoiding nuclear war. We also want to avoid trade wars and the end of American alliances that are decades old. In short, we are unwilling to entrust our nation’s foreign and security policy to a Trump administration.”

So, if you digested Yoo and Rabkin’s first lecture and were not sufficiently shocked that these “constitutional” and legal scholars didn’t put a premium on reconstituting the Supreme Court, well how does putting “avoiding a nuclear war” over preserving the physical and spiritual foundation for the existence of the United States of America, as reflected in it’s charter, grab you?

More on this ‘avoiding nuclear war’ business later, but you don’t have to be an academic to understand that a real live nuclear war, between nuclear powers, would be a catastrophic event. On the other hand, you also don’t have to be a rocket scientist to intuitively know that should the Constitution of the United States not survive, there is no guarantee that the United States itself, one of the surest, by virtue of both might and right, insurance policies against nuclear conflagration, would survive to serve as a deterrent against the very thing these gentlemen rate atop their list.

Oh, yes, and they caution against trade wars and the loss of “old alliances”, among other things. “The Constitution? Meh. But let’s hear it for trade and alliances!”…………..What?

If you analyze this article for the verbiage, you will find that it is filled with so many hypotheticals, it becomes somewhat comedic. It is rife with things like “If; what if; might; suppose; perhaps;’Will the Court?’; and so many other predicates it begins to sound less like a scholarly assessment and more like a traditional negative campaign ad. So there’s that.

And the kicker for many of us already on edge about what the Democratic State Socialist Party of America has in mind for us out here who think the Bill of Rights, in terms of Shalt Nots is second only to the Ten Commandments, is what John Yoo and Jeremy Rabkin write about the sacred Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

“But what if Hillary’s appointees overturn the handful of conservative victories of the past decade? That will be sad. We think the Court would err, for example, if it were to reverse its recent cases holding that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to own firearms. But it may not be better, in the long term, to “save” such rulings under a Court identified with Trump.”

And with that, fellow patriots, there are no more straws left. Too bad, so sad if your precious RKBA goes away when Hilly puts her judges in there, but the esteemed gentlemen don’t think it advisable for you to have a Trump Court to save your rights for you because ….like….long term ….and stuff.

Good grief.

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In the prologue above I alluded to my admiration for Professor Rabkin. John Yoo also held a special place in my heart for his role in legitimizing the necessary means to keep America and Americans safe via the “enhanced interrogation” methods used by our government vis-a-vis the Islamic terrorists. So that you can imagine my dismay upon reading the twisted logic, anti-constitutionalism and made-up situational ethics they utilized to characterize the Donald Trump candidacy as a threat to……to what? Not to America. They don’t care about America, they care about “free trade” and Peace at any price and hypothetical scenarios for the sake of a jolly good argument, we suppose. Rabkin’s passionate arguments of the past for nations and the attendant national sovereignty that goes with the concept of nations apparently fade into insignificance for him when faced with the possibility of an America-Firster as president. I cannot understand this. Except to possibly reconcile it with the knowledge that in addition to being a Professor of things related to Law, he accepted in 2007 a position on the Board of Directors of the….United States Institute for Peace. I know nothing more than that fact and I wholeheartedly agree that, whenever possible, peace should be….given a chance. But my dismay, disheartenment and disgruntlement at what I am hearing from influential people these days is peptic. Maybe I would have, in the face of what is being disseminated these days by the likes of Yoo and Rabkin and Michael Hayden, which I highlighted the other day, been better off to just let those brain cells rest comfortably.

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Great analysis, Prof Montgomery, esp for one so under-educated. Both Yoo and Rabkin might take issue with your legal reasoning, but no court would. And Aquinas himself would not challenge your logic. So res6t assured you are in good company. I regret you don’t Tweet, but a few of us do, I promise to set this under the noses of as many scholars as I can find. A masterpiece of irrefutable logic.

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August 19, 2016 4:32 pm

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